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Next: <a href="Writing-Symbols.html#Writing-Symbols" accesskey="n" rel="next">Writing Symbols</a>, Previous: <a href="Symbols.html#Symbols" accesskey="p" rel="prev">Symbols</a>, Up: <a href="Symbols.html#Symbols" accesskey="u" rel="up">Symbols</a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="BFD-Index.html#BFD-Index" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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<a name="Reading-symbols"></a>
<h4 class="subsection">2.7.1 Reading symbols</h4>
<p>There are two stages to reading a symbol table from a BFD:
allocating storage, and the actual reading process. This is an
excerpt from an application which reads the symbol table:
</p>
<div class="example">
<pre class="example">         long storage_needed;
         asymbol **symbol_table;
         long number_of_symbols;
         long i;

         storage_needed = bfd_get_symtab_upper_bound (abfd);

         if (storage_needed &lt; 0)
           FAIL

         if (storage_needed == 0)
           return;

         symbol_table = xmalloc (storage_needed);
           ...
         number_of_symbols =
            bfd_canonicalize_symtab (abfd, symbol_table);

         if (number_of_symbols &lt; 0)
           FAIL

         for (i = 0; i &lt; number_of_symbols; i++)
           process_symbol (symbol_table[i]);
</pre></div>

<p>All storage for the symbols themselves is in an objalloc
connected to the BFD; it is freed when the BFD is closed.
</p>



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